← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
With or Without U2 Edition Part 1
01:05:02
How Bono and the boys pivoted from the earnest ’80s to the ironic ’90s. They’ve always been both cool and cringe.
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- [00:03]
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- [00:22]
Chris Melanfy
Hey there Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hit parade+ you'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hit Parade the Bridge our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again to join, that's slate.com hitparadeplus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show. Among the hits of 1984 that we didn't get a chance to cover in last month's episode about that great pop year was this stirring anthem. It only reached number 33 on the Hot 100, but its impact was, in hindsight, pretty seismic. The US chart breakthrough by an Irish quartet whose name sounded like an American military spy plane. In 1984, most Americans were only just getting to know U2.
- [02:23]
Bono
One man he resists, one man watched on an empty beast.
- [02:40]
Chris Melanfy
Soon enough, the quartet of bassist Adam Clayton, Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. The guitarist who calls himself the Edge, and the vocalist better known as Bono would become the biggest band on the radio, making conscious rock cool, even romantic, at a time when the charts were awash in dance pop and hair metal. From Whitney to white snake, U2 were topping the hot 100 with searching, ethereal songs that sounded like this. Nothing on the pop charts in the late 80s sounded quite like U2. And then, just when their hyperconscious image threatened to become a parody of itself.
- [03:58]
Bono
Am I bugging you? No mean to bug ya. Okay, Edge, play the blues.
- [04:11]
Chris Melanfy
You two called BS on themselves, rebooting their sound for the 1990s to become sleeker, funkier, more synthetic, even more ironic. Then when synthetic, ironic U2 threatened to become gauche.
- [04:46]
Bono
Just go take.
- [04:52]
Chris Melanfy
Bono and the boys pivoted again back toward a new kind of conscious anthem that made them the world's ultimate stadium band. Today on Hit Parade, we will present U2 as not just a musical phenomenon, but a cultural case study. How long can any pop act remain relevant? When do hitmakers become legacy acts? And weren't U2 kinda always both cool and cringe? If nothing else, Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry kept themselves on the charts longer than virtually all of their rock peers. They even titled one of their best and biggest songs after everybody's favorite chart position. And that's where your hit Parade marches today, the week ending May 16, 1992, when 1 by U2 cracked the top 10 on the Hot 100, a month after reaching number, well 1 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart. And it affirmed that U2 had pulled off one of the most challenging pivots in pop history, smoothly transitioning from the earnest, anthemic 80s to the moody, sardonic 90s. How did they extend their run as one of the world's biggest bands? And what exactly were they thinking when they forced an album onto your iPhone? I don't mean to bug ya, but join me as we get monomaniacal and Bono maniacal and try to puzzle out why can't we live with or without YouTube? Stick around.
- [07:30]
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- [08:56]
Chris Melanfy
Several times in the history of this podcast I have served up a quote from the book the Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time, co authored in 1991 by late Rolling Stone critic Jimmy Guterman and his writing partner Owen O'Donnell. I do this advisedly because Guterman and O'Donnell wrote that book to be deliberately provocative. And some of their opinions have not aged well. Frankly, I disagree with more stuff in this book than I agree with. For example, they named U2's 1984 LP The Unforgettable Fire, one of the 50 worst albums of all time. Uh, okay, contrarian boomer. Still, I bring up the worst rock and roll records of all time a lot on Hit Parade because it's hilarious and Witty. Guterman and O'Donnell may be trolling, but they make some very smart points. And one of the smartest and most succinct is the opening sentence of their entry on the Unforgettable Fire. It reads, quote, if you two weren't full of shit, they wouldn't be as great as they often are. This is exactly right. U2 were always full of themselves, especially their front man, the Mission driven Bono. And they have never been subtle. They made stadium sized music even before they were selling out stadiums. They were fired up by the do it yourself ethos of punk music. But they opened their career with fist pumping anthems, not nihilistic screeds. I mean, this is what you two sounded like on their first lp, not unlike Billy Joel. You two inspire both admiration and contempt. And as I said in our Billy Joel episode of Hit Parade, I think the admirers and the haters are, are keying into the same thing. In U2's case, it's the bigness, big emotions, grand gestures, fervent belief that rock and roll can save your soul, even save the world. Here's Bono in 1985, backstage at Live Aid, just after U2's performance.
- [12:16]
Bono
Well, the song Pride, which was inspired by the untimely death of Martin Luther King, I think still carries, especially in my own country, you know, which is a volatile situation in Ireland, but also around the world. My heart goes out to those people in South Africa that are trying to affect change there. And I just hope that they can affect change again in a peaceful way. But change is gonna come.
- [12:38]
Chris Melanfy
You two have not only been self important, or if you prefer, full of shit since day one. People have been giving them shit forever, almost since day one. Bob Geldof, the frontman of the band Boomtown Rats, better remembered as the creator of the famine relief charity events Band Aid and Live Aid, admits that he hated U2 early on. When they were young punks from Dublin, he called them posers. Quote, I thought they were, frankly, dire. Geldoff told the BBC they would pretend they were punk stars. They absolutely were not, unquote, this contempt for Bono, which had softened by 1984, they're now friends, may have contributed to Geldof giving his fellow Irishman the most notoriously tone deaf line in Band Aid's do they know it's Christmas? Indeed, dunking on Bono has been a sport for a very long time. Three years after Band Aid, on the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards, comedian Bobcat Goldthwait took the piss out of Bono. Bobcat showed up in a leather vest reminiscent of Bono's video garb and did a little vocalizing.
- [14:13]
Bono
I was gonna come out and do my Bono impression, you know, my hands are t.
- [14:33]
Chris Melanfy
And again, this was in 1987, which, as we'll discuss momentarily, was Peak U2, when they were on top of the world. No one has ever been afraid to poke fun at Bonobo. I won't even go into detail about how TV's South park portrayed him two decades later. Talk about giving him shit.
- [14:58]
Bono
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [15:05]
Chris Melanfy
All I have to say to the haters, speaking not only as a critic but a chart Analyst, is this. U2's hit making career is pretty unique. Like a cat, this band has had multiple lives. As I said a moment ago, U2 arrived fully formed, but they did evolve a lot. In fact, there are few rock bands that evolved as much as U2 and lasted as long as they did, mind you. For comparison, there are quite a few shape shifting solo acts that stayed ahead of the zeitgeist. Like David Bowie, for example, who sang about changes early in his career and indeed kept changing his sound.
- [16:09]
Bono
Turn and face the strain.
- [16:17]
Chris Melanfy
Or Madonna, who scored hits as a club queen, a balladeer, a soul mama and a cyborg. Or Taylor Swift, who dominated both country and popped and has even rapped when she felt like it.
- [16:44]
Bono
Big reputation, big reputation oh, you and me we got big reputations Ah, and you heard about me Ooh.
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Chris Melanfy
While it's not exactly easy to evolve and stay on top like these artists have, it's easier for a soloist than for a group. A group is a complex and combustible organism. Of course, we know that the Beatles changed a lot in their day, from moptop heartthrobs to psychedelic rockers. But the Beatles only lasted eight years as recording artists. What about Queen? They tried anthems, ballads, cabaret, metal, pop, opera, funk, even rockabilly. And Queen's recording career lasted about twice as long as the Beatles did, but it was cut short by Freddie Mercury's untimely death. And of course, there's the granddaddy of them all, the Rolling Stones, who are still recording and touring to this day. And while the Stones have remained pretty sonically consistent, they have broadened the scope of their core rock and roll sound from R and B to country to disco. But the Stones have changed members multiple times over the years. Only Mick Jagger and Keith Richards remain from the original lineup. And their core hit making period lasted about 25 years from the mid-60s to the end of the 80s. The Stone's last top 40 hits were about 35 years ago. By contrast, U2 were not only pop hitmakers for a quarter century and rock radio hitmakers for about four decades. By the way, they scored their latest rock radio hit less than a year ago. U2 is also still, after nearly 50 years together, the same four guys, that's really unusual. Their ability to maintain their lineup, score major hits, continue recording material that sounds like them, while constantly expanding the definition of what that sound is. I can't think of another band with their profile that has pulled that off. But before they could become the world's biggest rock band or major pop stars, U2 had to find each other. And it happened even before punk had reached their hometown of Dublin. This is British guitarist and singer songwriter Peter Frampton with Show Me the Way from the top selling album of 1976 from Frampton comes alive. When four teenagers in Dublin formed a band that year, this was one of the few songs they could play. Three decades later, when Bono met Peter Frampton at a charity event, he thanked him for helping him discover his voice. Back in 76, the band was formed by a 14 year old drummer named Larry Mullen Jr. Who posted a notice on the bulletin board at his Dublin high school Mount Temple, seeking other musicians. Among those who turned up to play in Mullins kitchen were a stylish 16 year old who owned his own bass guitar named Adam Clayton. A long faced 15 year old born David Evans in Wales but raised in Ireland, who had cobbled together a refurbished guitar and a 16 year old born Paul Hewson who showed up without a guitar but full of ideas. Almost immediately. Larry Mullen deferred the role of bandleader to Paul Hewson, who as a loudmouth teen roaming around Dublin with a surrealist street gang, had been given the sarcastic nickname Bono Vox, taken from the name of a local hearing aid shop. Hewson shortened his nickname to just Bono. That same gang nicknamed David Evans the Edge, a pun on his angular shaped head. Those irreverent nicknames stuck at first. The band were called Feedback and they had five members. David the Edge Evans brought along his older brother Dick Evans as a second guitarist. When Feedback played the Mount Temple School talent show, they only knew the Frampton Song and the Bay City Rollers version of Bye Bye Baby.
- [22:58]
Bono
Bye Bye Baby, Baby, Goodbye.
- [23:08]
Chris Melanfy
Feedback were reportedly pretty terrible, but they had a spark and were compelling on stage. When punk rock broke out across England and Ireland in 1977, the band realized that technical proficiency was not essential. Soon enough, Feedback changed their name to the Hype, adding punk covers to their repertoire from bands like the Stranglers, Buzzcocks and the Ramones. For about a year, the Hype pretended that their cover of the Ramones Glad to See youe was an original song. In 1978, the hype got an audition for a TV program on youth music being broadcast on the Irish public television network RTE. Here in March of 78 is the hype, who were just about to change their name performing on the RTE show. One of the first songs they wrote called Street Missions.
- [24:26]
Bono
Street Missions Street Missions.
- [24:32]
Chris Melanfy
Street Missions about that Band Name Name Bassist Adam Clayton was friends with Steve Avril, a graphic artist and a founding member of Ireland's first punk rock band, the Radiators from Space. Averill felt the Hype needed a better name and he offered Clayton a list of suggested alternatives. Adam took that list back to his bandmates who rejected suggestions like the Blazers or Flying Tigers. But the name on Avril's list that they hated the least because it seemed so vague, so open to interpretation, was U2. So they terminated the hype, telling the Edge's brother Dick Evans that as part of their name change, they would now be a four piece band and the band became U2. At first, U2 were shaping up as strictly an Irish phenomenon. After they signed with British manager Paul McGinnis, he got them a demo deal with CBS Records, who took the band into a Dublin studio to record a three song EP in the summer of 79. When the EP, called U23 sold out all 1,000 copies in Ireland, the band followed up with another Irish only single, Another Day, that won them a global contract with Island Records. The debut album U2, recorded for island in 1980, titled simply Boy, was pivotal in several ways. They were paired with producer Steve Lillywhite, who had produced hits for Susie and the Banshees and xtc. He would go on to produce a half dozen albums with U2 and he encouraged the band to be the most expansive widescreen version of themselves. And on the album's lead single, A Day Without Me, the Edge employed a delay effect unit for the first time, a guitar echo that made his chords chime and helped establish not only his playing style but U2's entire sound. It was, however, the album's second single and leadoff track that came to define the band early on, a clarion rocker that built off the edges hammering chords, Mullins and Clayton's marching rhythms and fervent quasi religious lyrics from Bono. The song's zealous title was I Will Follow. I Will Follow charted better in America than it did in England or Ireland. The single missed the UK and Irish pop charts, but in the spring of 81 it cracked the top 20 on Billboard's then new Top Tracks chart, which ranked songs at America's popular album oriented rock or AOR format. U2's sound was more modern than virtually all of the bands on AOR, but the song's anthemic qualities translated with an American rock audience. Boy reached a decent number 63 on the Billboard LP chart and won the band early critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. U2 and producer Lily White went back into the studio quickly to record a follow up, which arrived in the fall of 81, just months after boy had peaked. The appropriately titled October doubled down on the band members growing spirituality. The LPs lead off track, Gloria, was essentially a hymn in rock clothing, its chorus sung by Bono in Latin. Gloria inte Domine Gloria exultate Glory in you Lord, Glory exalt him. The band was trying to reconcile their secular music with their Christianity. All four were raised in a variety of faith traditions, both Catholic and Protestant, and as young adults, Bono, the Edge and Mullen joined the Shalom Fellowship, a non sectarian charismatic Christian group devoted to Jesus and social justice. Though you two have never been officially tagged a Christian rock band and they eventually broke away from Shalom, to this day, Christian fans worldwide interpret much of the band's catalog through that lens. October did well in the UK and Ireland, but the album performed poorly in America, which suggested that Boy and I Will Follow had been flukes. U2 were still too quirky for pop radio and not reliably embraced by rock stations. Their next album, on which they would trade religiosity for politics, would change that war. The third LP, produced with Steve Lillywhite, affirmed U2's image in the 80s. Not just fiery, but firebrands. The opening track, Sunday Bloody Sunday, directly addressed Ireland's troubles as a metonym for anti war activism. Another track decried nuclear proliferation and the album's first single, New Year's Day obliquely alluded to Lech Walesa's Polish Solidarity movement.
- [32:23]
Bono
I will be with you again.
- [32:29]
Chris Melanfy
Released as War's first single in the winter of 1983, New Year's Day became U2's first solid global hit. Top 10 in the UK, number two in Ireland, top 20 in a half dozen other European countries and in America. The song's striking music video, shot on a snowy hillside in Sweden so cold that Bono could barely mouth the lyrics, made the track a major MTV hit, pushing the song to number two on the Rock Tracks chart and even number 53 on the Hot 100, U2's first US pop hit of any kind. War also became U2's first major US album, peaking at number 12 on the Billboard album chart and going gold by the summer of 83. Central to U2's cerebral image and rebel rock spirit was their live show, punctuated by Larry Mullins marching tempos and Bono's crowd rallying theatrics at Colorado's outdoor Red Rocks Amphitheater in June 1983. Recorded in the rain for a live video and album on Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bono, who declared it was not a rebel song, an allusion to U2's non partisanship in the Irish troubles and their anti violence stance, marched out at the song's climax with a white flag. He gave the crowd the flagpole to wave and led them in a chant of no more.
- [34:36]
Bono
Away.
- [34:57]
Chris Melanfy
Few in the Red Rocks crowd likely had informed positions on on Irish politics, but the performance was essential to establishing U2's meta iconography. The live Sunday Bloody Sunday video was an MTV smash, and even more than the New Year's day clip solidified U2's image in 1984. For a change of pace, the band switched producers, bidding a temporary farewell to Steve Lillywhite and working for the first time with art rock pioneer Brian Eno, who had produced David Bowie and talking heads. Yu2 had to persuade Eno to work with them as he was trying to transition out of rock production and found U2's early work rather square. The band agreed to be guided by him towards something artier, more ambient. The result was the aforementioned 1984 LP The Unforgettable Fire, which would become U2's most atmospheric album to date. Ironically, this ethereal, heady album gave U2 their first US top 40 hit, a song Bono wrote about American civil rights hero Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Though it is now regarded as their most cherished anthem, Pride in the Name of Love has long frustrated Bono he regards his lyrics as vague and impressionistic. It even gets its most specific detail wrong. Dr. King was not killed in the morning of April 4, 1968. When Bono sings it in concert, he changes that lyric to early evening to correct the record. Nonetheless, the song was galvanizing and catchy. The combination of Larry Mullins cracking drum rolls, Clayton's rhythmic bass line, the Edge's relentlessly arpeggiated riff, and Bono's most sing alongable chorus made the song irresistible. It even featured guest backing vocals by Chrissie Hind of the Pretenders. Pride crack the American top 40 in early December 1984, peaking at number 33 and reached the top 10 across England, Ireland, Europe and Australia. In America, the unforgettable fire album matched War's number 12 peak and became U2's first platinum album in 1985, generating multiple hits at rock radio including Pride, Wire and A Sort of Homecoming. Just a few weeks after A Sort of Homecoming peaked on US rock stations, U2 played to their largest crowd ever, a show where they were not the headliner but stole the day from just about everybody except maybe Queen. More in a moment.
- [39:13]
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- [39:42]
Felix Salmon
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- [40:19]
Chris Melanfy
I think people are focusing on celebrities right now partly because the bigger macro problems are really overwhelming and terrifying.
- [40:26]
Felix Salmon
Where California needs to go from here and how we should be thinking about the use of inmates as firefighters and whether this choice given to inmates is really a choice at all.
- [40:38]
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Felix Salmon
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- [40:50]
Carvel
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- [41:44]
Bono
A group whose heart is in Dublin, Ireland, whose spirit is with the world. A group that's never had any problem saying how they feel. You too Sunday Bloody Sunday.
- [42:17]
Chris Melanfy
Here'S the main thing to know about U2's performance at live Aid, the Transatlantic famine relief mega concert on July 13, 1985. Their set at London's Wembley Stadium was supposed to be three songs. They only performed two, one of which lasted for 12 minutes, which was entirely Bono's doing. The band, Bono included, thought it was a disaster. Instead, it made them legendary.
- [42:59]
Carvel
And.
- [43:05]
Chris Melanfy
After their set opening performance of Sunday Bloody Sunday, YouTube began playing their second song of the set, a hypnotic deep cut from the unforgettable Fire album called Bad. From the Jump, Bono was trying to make the performance memorable by throwing in a few spontaneous lines from the Lou Reed classic rocker Satellite of Love. As Bad progressed, Bono, energized by the 72,000 fans in the stadium and the 1.5 billion watching on TV around the world, sought to connect with the vast crowd. So as the song reached what seemed to be its final climax, Bono dropped the mic, jumped down from the stage and and walked along the apron looking for a fan he could dance with. Bono wound up pulling three young women from the audience. One of them later claimed he saved her life as she was being crushed by the surging crowd. He was gone from the stage. So long the Edge. Clayton and Mullen lost sight of him and desperately kept vamping on their rift for several minutes. When Bono finally returned to the mic, he was still dreaming up new stuff. He mashed up U2's Bad with the chorus of the Rolling Stones 19677 number one hit Ruby Tuesday, getting the crowd to sing along before throwing in a bit of the Stones sympathy for The Devil and Lou Reed's hit Walk on the Wild side.
- [45:35]
Bono
Thank you, God bless you.
- [45:38]
Chris Melanfy
It was a ridiculously self indulgent livewire stunt and impractical the performance of Bad ran so long, U2 had to drop from the set Their biggest global hit to that point, Pride in the Name of Love. In the immediate aftermath, the the band brooded over their messy Live Aid appearance until critics and fans universally praised it. Rolling Stone's Gavin Edwards later wrote, far from being a blown opportunity, Live Aid was a career making moment that returned all of U2's albums to the UK charts, established them in the USA and transformed them into worldwide stars. What it also meant was that whatever U2 released next would probably open to greater chart success than they had ever experienced everywhere, including America. Accordingly, they decided their next LP would be, in essence, their tribute to America.
- [46:57]
Bono
Action through your.
- [47:08]
Chris Melanfy
Having toured the states repeatedly from 1981-85, U2 picked up on American folk, blues and country music and saw its kinship with Irish music. They filtered these influences through their own atmospheric rock sound, working again with producer Brian Eno and his associate, Canadian Danielle Lanois, who had just produced Peter Gabriel's 1986 album. So at one point U2 were going to title the album Desert Songs, and they commissioned photographer Anton Corbine to shoot them for the COVID in the Mojave Desert desert in California. During the shoot, when Corbine introduced them to a hardy desert plant called a Joshua tree, Bono decided that should be the LP's title instead. Released in March 1987, the Joshua Tree was a near instant success. If SoundScan, the computerized chart system Billboard instituted in the nineties, had existed in 1987, the LP would surely have entered the American chart at number one. As it was, it debuted at number seven instantly, making it U2's biggest US LP, and then rose to the top spot three weeks later, holding there for nine weeks. Fueling its rise was U2's first true American pop smash, essentially their first power ballad.
- [49:14]
Bono
With or without you.
- [49:19]
Chris Melanfy
With or without you was a mood. The Edge filtered his playing through a device called the infinite guitar that gave his notes a chiming sustain. Adam Clayton's ethereal bass was mixed higher than usual, Larry Mullins drum drums emerge only halfway through the song, amping up the drama, and Bono delivered a yearning, smoldering vocal that builds to a howling crescendo. It was U2 theology turned into boudoir music. With or without yout topped the hot 100 in May of 87, less than a month after the Joshua Tree topped the album chart for the follow up, U2 went with a song that was perhaps their most theological hit. At root, it was a gospel song. I Still Haven't Found what I'm Looking for is about the search for enlightenment. Bono has described it as an anthem of doubt more than faith, with lyrics about an unfulfilled quest and a stately, striding Larry Mullen Rhythm. Still Haven't Found had the cadences of a revival preacher. In fact, at one stop on the Joshua Tree Tour at New York's Madison Square Garden, U2 performed the song with an actual gospel choir, Harlem's New Voices of Freedom. By August of 87, I still haven't Found what I'm Looking for was also number one on the high hot 100. What was remarkable about all this was how out of step U2 sounded with virtually everything else on the charts at the time. Their stately meditation on the divine was sitting atop hits by Madonna, George Michael and Motley Crue. Even on alternative, leaning hits by the likes of Suzanne Vega or Crowded House weren't occupying the same sonic space as U2. They were a genre of one ethereal but anthemic, moody but romantic, rooted in post punk but giving pure pop on their terms. A third single from the Joshua Tree, the stirring, thunderous album opener, where the Streets have no Name, followed its predecessors up the Hot 100, peaking at a more earthbound but still impressive number 13. Remember, three years earlier, the similar, popularly rousing Pride couldn't get higher on the Hot 100 than number 33. As evidence of what megastars they now were, the video for where the Streets have no Name recreated the Beatles 1969 rooftop concert stunt on the roof of a liquor store in downtown Los Angeles. As police and thousands of fans looked.
- [53:58]
Bono
I think we're being shut down.
- [54:07]
Chris Melanfy
Earnestness was now U2's brand. The year before the Joshua Tree dropped, they had played Amnesty International's Conspiracy of Hope tour with such socially conscious artists as Sting, Peter Gabriel and Joan Baez. Along with Bruce Springsteen, they were now seen as rock's conscience. They appeared on the COVID of Time magazine in the spring of 87. Time said of the band, they are about spiritual search and conscience and commitment. An earlier Rolling Stone cover story called you to the band that matters most, maybe even the only band that matters. It was, in theory, a good position to be in for a rising band, but it also primed them for a knock off their pedestal. They started to see evidence of that on their next album, an overstuffed double lp which served As a studio album, a live album and a movie soundtrack, all at Once is the song Charles.
- [55:20]
Bono
Manson stole from the Beatles. We're still in the back when you get to the bottom. You go back to the top of the slide and you stop and you turn and you go for a rock. Then you get to the bottom. Then you see me again.
- [55:40]
Chris Melanfy
U2 hired director Phil Joannou to film their their 1987American tour, recording new material along the way. The project became Rattle and Hum, a film whose soundtrack was divided between live tracks and new material. Both the film and the album captured the group's fascination with rock history, roots music and American culture to a perhaps fetishistic degree. When the film opened in the fall of 88, it was just shy of a disaster, with very modest box office and mostly scathing reviews. A Washington Post critic called it a hagiographic fanzine on celluloid, stagey and overproduced. As for the album, the response was more mixed. The live recordings were mostly plotting and Bono came in for particular criticism for his showily self righteous stage monologues.
- [56:51]
Bono
A man who has lost faith in the peacemakers of the west while they argue and while they fail to support a man like Bishop Tutu and his request for economic sanctions against South Africa. Am I bugging you?
- [57:13]
Chris Melanfy
But the studio material was better received. U2 had studied the album with a few strong singles, including one of their highest charting bangers, Desire, a song that shamelessly emulated the classic shuffling Bo Diddley beat from early rock and roll. It reached number three on the Hot 100 and was one of the first number ones on Billboard's then new alternative rock chart, Modern Rock Tracks. Several of the singles on Rattle and Hum were aping American R and B, including a duet with blues legend B.B. king called when Love Comes to Town and the album's second single, a horn inflected, worshipfully hokey homage to Billie Holiday called Angel of Harlem, reached number 14 on the pop chart and topped Billboard's album rock chart, Love Won't Let Me Go.
- [58:30]
Bono
So long.
- [58:36]
Chris Melanfy
Because U2 were at the height of their imperial phase, Rattle and hum reached number one on the album chart in November of 1988 and stayed there for six weeks, impressive for such a hodgepodge LP, but by the summer of 89 it seemed even fans had soured on the project as it dropped to the lower half of the album chart in roughly six months. And its last single, the majestic love song All I Want Is yous only reached number 83 on the Hot 100. By the fall of 89, the album was gone. At this point, even the members of U2 sensed they had a problem. Their saviors of rock image had bloated beyond their wildest conceptions. Yes, including Bono's, and their self seriousness had become a trap. Their global fanbase was now massive enough that any music they released would get a strong reception, but they didn't like being perceived as a messianic self parody, as indicated by Negativeland's turn of the 90s art project single. Simply titled U2, it built off some foul mouthed outtake footage of American top 40 host Casey Kas. So apparently even Casey Kasem was sick of U2. After the promotional cycle for Rattle and Hum wound down, the band took an extended hiatus. They read the Room and decided they'd need to reinvent themselves. If anyone was going to take the piss out of U2, they were going to do it. When we come back, you two trade in social conscience for irony, funk and some new technologies as they literally change their rhythm, visit the discotheque, outmaneuver the grunge era, and even partner with a hip computer company. They became cool again. Until they weren't. But were U2 ever really cool? And did it matter when they kept scoring hits? Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfen. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis. Derek John is executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts and we had help from Joel Meyer. Alicia Montgomery is VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanfy.
- [62:51]
Carvel
SA.